Archive for 05/01/2011 - 06/01/2011

Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology Edited by Mary Ann Caws

Saturday, May 28, 2011 § 1

Surrealist Painters and Poets: The Literary Writings of the Inn(o)vative Avant Garde

A Book Review by 
David Detrich

 Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology (2001) by Mary Ann Caws is a large collection of Surrealist writings that includes some of the most interesting works of the 20th Century, representing a literary movement that begins in 1924, and continues to the present as an innovative trend that has developed the esthetic theories of the avant garde with a poetic style of writing that includes visual metaphors, which parallel the paintings of the Surrealist artists. This collection includes works by the founding Surrealist members: André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon, and those who followed afterwards, including Michel Leiris, Joyce Mansour, Max Ernst, and others.

In 1951 Robert Motherwell published a collection of writings called The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology. Conceived as a sequel to that volume, Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology does for Surrealism what Motherwell's book did for Dadaism.
                                                           The MIT Press

The anthology begins with a Mary Ann Caws essay called Remembering Jacqueline Remembering André (2001) about her meeting with Jacqueline Lamba, the former wife of André Breton, and if is the face of André Breton which has attracted many of his followers with his look of intelligent integrity with the trace of a smile.

It was in the beginning, Breton's face I had loved, wherever I saw it... Everyone else seemed to find that face leonine, massive, strong, impressive. I was no less impressed, but found it in the picture to be as vulnerable as it was striking: and so I loved it. 
                                                          Remembering Jacqueline 
                                                          Remembering André
                                                          Mary Ann Caws

Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology continues with Hans Arp "Notes from a Diary" (1932), which shows another side of the Dadaist personality whose poetry and prose is represented in Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories (1972). These notes show the sense of humor that distinguishes Hans Arp as a Dadaist poet, known for his concrete amorphous sculptures and his esthetic theory of nature.

man calls abstract that which is concrete. yet i find this a good deal in his favor... i understand that he should call a cubist picture abstract because parts have been abstracted from the object which served as a pretext for the picture, but a picture of a plastic for which no object was pretexted i find as concrete and as perceptible as a leaf or a stone.
                                                          Notes from a Diary
                                                          Hans Arp

The pretext for the expression of a picture is the idea that precedes the thought of expression, and is an opportunity for the poet to say something of relevance, or to write a novel based on a pretext. This is similar to my own use of the word in my novel-in-progress The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, a novel where the abstract and the concrete verge on the surreal, a trend in Surrealism that occurred in the 1940s, when it became influenced by abstraction in painting from the New York school of Abstract Expressionism. This converging of esthetic theories produced some of the classic works of Surrealism, when it became a major trend in art and literature.

Hans Bellmer writes about youthful eroticism of girls in What Oozed through the Staircase (1980) with a sense of appreciation. Hans Bellmer is an artist known for his sculpture and his novel The Doll (2005), and for his friendship with the Surrealist artist/novelist Unica Zürn.

...What oozed through the staircase or the cracks in the doors when these girls were playing at being doctors, up there in the attic, what dripped from these clysters filled with raspberry juice, of if I dare say so, with raspberry verjuice, all this could easily take on, on the whole, the appearance of seduction, and even arouse desire.
                                                           What Oozed through 
                                                           the Staircase   
                                                           Hans Bellmer

Surrealist eroticism involves a poetic perspective where the fantasies of the unconscious mind can be expressed in dreamlike passages, and André Breton writes on this theme in Age (1982), where he writes poetic lines with a sense of prophetic foreshadowing.

Dawn, farewell! I emerge from the haunted wood, brave the highways, torrid crosses. An ordaining foliage leads me astray. August is as free of fissures as a millstone. 
     Cling to the panoramic view, sniff the space and reel off the smoke mechanically. 
     I shall chose for myself a precarious enclosure: We will jump the hedge if we must. The provinces full of heated begonias are chattering, tidying things up. How nicely the griffons troop around the ruffled flying of skirts!
     Where to look after the fountains? I'm wrong to put my faith in her necklace of bubbles...
     Eyes before sweetpeas.
                                                           Age
                                                           André Breton

Leonora Carrington changed tense at the age of 94, having lived in Mexico for years. She associated with Max Ernst in Provence, and her Surrealist novels and paintings imply ancient metaphysical realities. In The House of Fear (1988) the narrator describes her meeting with a character who is a horse.

     "Well, you see, I'm really bored by this job. I only do it for the money. I don't really belong in these surroundings. I'll show you, next time there is a party."
     After due reflection, I said to myself that it was easy to see that this horse wasn't just an ordinary horse. Having reached this conclusion, I felt I should get to know him better.
     "I'll certainly come to your party. I'm beginning to think I rather like you."
                                                          The House of Fear
                                                          Leonora Carrington

The Surrealist genre may feature characters who are animals, waves, or waterfalls. Leonora Carrington describes a character who is a horse, Octavio Paz portrays a character who is a wave, and in my own novel-in-progress I describe a character who is a red haired waterfall.

Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology (2001) by Mary Ann Caws has translations of many of the Surrealist writers and artists, and is one of the most interesting collections of Surrealist literature that is available in English, with a multiplicity of Surrealist texts for those who enjoy avant garde poetic writing that is expressing a sophisticated painterly esthetic.

 David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He is the editor of Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.


Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton by Mark Polizzotti

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 § 1

The Monumental André Breton Biography: A Detailed Inter(text)ual Interpretation of the Surrealist Movement 

A Book Review by 
David Detrich

 Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (1995) by Mark Polizzotti is a biography of the poet/essayist André Breton, who is the founder of the Surrealist movement in literature, and with his early works such as The Magnetic Fields (1920),  began the literary movement that is an expression of psychic automatism, evolving from the Paris Dada movement after the performance of the Tristan Tzara drama The Gas Heart (1921). It is the role of the biographer/translator to familiarize his, or herself, with the life of the poet, and Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton is based on extensive research on the events which make up André Breton's life, becoming a monumental work on the contribution of André Breton and the Surrealist poets, novelists, and artists to the innovative literature of the 20th Century.

In preparing this book, I have benefited first and foremost from special access to Breton's unpublished papers and correspondence. This access was granted by Breton's heirs, who waived a specific testamentary provision that the papers not be made public until 2016.
                                                           Acknowledgements
                                                           Mark Polizzotti

When the date of 2016 is mentioned, this wish to protect André Breton's papers may imply that Surrealism as a movement is an ongoing literary trend that may have a specific future development. This creates an open structure for biography, and Mark Polizzotti has written with understanding about the events of André Breton's life, complete with relevant comments made at the time of writing.

...I had several notebooks, totaling over 1,000 pages, giving a day-to-day calendar of Breton's life. It's not that I meant to follow chronology slavishly: though the biography is presented in chronological form, my research constantly (and unavoidably) jumped from period to period and aspect to aspect.
                                                   Perry Lindstrom:
                                                   Interview with Mark Polizzotti
                                                   Mark Polizzotti

 Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton analyzes the creation of André Breton's early writings, such as the The Magnetic Fields (1920) by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, a collaborative text that shows the poetic style of visionary writing that foreshadows future events in the development of the Surrealist movement.

Once we loved the year's last sunny days, the narrow plain where our eyes' gaze flowed like those impetuous rivers of our childhood. There remain nothing but reflections now in the woods repopulated with absurd animals, with well-known plants.
                                                           Magnetic Fields
                                                           André Breton and 
                                                           Philippe Soupault

The Magnetic Fields represents the early poetic style of André Breton and Philippe Soupault, with the transition in scene from the "impetuous rivers" which thrilled the young poets, to the peaceful "reflections" in the woods of the present moment of writing. Mark Polizzotti describes the collaboration of André Breton and Philppe Soupault as a "two headed author," similar to the Hydra-headed monster that is known from mythology.

Instead, the texts that ultimately composed The Magnetic Fields resulted from a process of collaboration. The "man cut in two" metamorphosed into the two halves of a simultaneous writing consciousness, or as Aragon described it, "a single two-headed author." The other head belonged to Soupault.
                                                          Revolution of the Mind
                                                          Mark Polizzotti

If You Please (1920) by André Breton and Philippe Soupault is a drama that was published the year before The Gas Heart (1921) by Tristan Tzara, and shows the youthful spontaneity of Surrealism in a drama written in a rationalist style, foreshadowing the objective prose and omniscient logic which would lead to the Surrealist novel Nadja (1928).

Valentine: The brilliant words I would like to say stream in the sky like stars which you were looking at. You don't want to laugh?  When you are away from me it is your laugh that I hear first of all.
                                                           If You Please
                                                           André Breton
                                                           Philippe Soupault

Mark Polizzotti considers the individual works of André Breton in Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, so that the reader will learn in detail how the early poetry was written, and how the idea of automatic writing began. André Breton had studied psychiatry during the years of the First World War, and was trying to evoke a spontaneous monologue from his patients, who he thought would reveal the contents of the unconscious mind.

Although Breton first launched Surrealism as a movement in 1924, he never failed to point out that the true kernel of the "Surrealist revolution," lay in the discovery of automatic writing—and specifically in the composition of The Magnetic Fields—in the spring of 1919.
                                                           Revolution of the Mind
                                                           Mark Polizzotti
           
After writing The Magnetic Fields André Breton went on to write the Surrealist novel Soluble Fish (1924), and The Surrealist Manifesto (1924), so that the Surrealist movement was launched after the conclusion of Paris Dada. The youthful witticisms of Dada continued with Surrealism, and André Breton created a new genre with the Surrealist novel: a poetic novel written with a high degree of visual metaphor giving the new literary movement an innovative brilliance.

Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton by Mark Polizzotti is one of the most detailed biographical works on the Surrealist movement, with numerous quotations that reveal the precise meaning that André Breton and the Surrealists attributed to the creative works which make up the most significant development in 20th Century literature and art.

 David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He is the editor of Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Soluble Fish by André Breton

§ 0

Soluble Fish by André Breton: Metaphor as a Poetic Art/Form Transforming the Surrealist Novel

A Book Review by 
David Detrich

 Soluble Fish (1924) by André Breton is a sophisticated poetic novel which is one of the first works of Surrealism, and with the Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), began the new literary movement which followed Paris Dada in the decade of the 1920s, after the success of the drama by Tristan Tzara called The Gas Heart (1921). Surrealism represents a significant new movement based on the esthetic theory of psychic automatism, and the youthful charm and brilliance of André Breton is evident in this early innovative text.

The park at this time of day, stretched its blond hands over the magic fountain. A meaningless castle rolled along the surface of the earth. Close to God the register of this chateau was open at a drawing of shadows, feathers, irises. The Young Widow's Kiss was the name of the country inn caressed by the speed of the automobile and the drapings of horizontal grasses.
                                                           Soluble Fish
                                                           André Breton

This passage describes a painterly scene which reveals the metaphor of a "park" with “blond hands,” an erotic image hidden in the unconscious awareness of the narrator, and expressed as a metaphor. And when this sentence is followed by, “A meaningless castle rolled along the surface of the earth,” I imagine a chess piece, an image which could be made into a film,  and which continues the theme of Paris Dada: the whimsical, and meaninglessness of chance occurrence. The theme of "shadow, feathers, irises," is reminiscent of Unica Zürn's drawings, and from the narrative perspective of someone who is "close to God," the poetic novel Soluble Fish begins with images which represent the irrational, yet are showing a spiritual enlightenment which sets the tone for the literary writing of the 1920s, a sophisticated metaphysical inter(text)uality which influenced the first works of Surrealism.

 Tell your mistress that the edge of her bed is a river of flowers.
                                                           Soluble Fish
                                                           André Breton

André Breton introduced the idea of poetic dialogue in Soluble Fish, a trend that has continued in the Surrealist novel through the first decades of the 21st Century. This innovative technique created the genre of the Surrealist novel: where the characters speak in poetic lines of painterly images, expressing a subtle eroticism based on post-Dadaist metaphor.

But above all, Soluble Fish is haunted by figures of elusive women: women "with breasts of ermine" and transparent hands, who wear "garments of the pure air," who dematerialize into shadows and veils during lovemaking, then disappear forever.
                                                          Revolution of the Mind:
                                                          The Life of André Breton
                                                          Mark Polizzotti

The eroticism of Soluble Fish reveals a sophisticated French culture, with scenes that parallel the Marquis De Sade, where different aspects of sexuality are considered by the young lovers. The "breasts of ermine" create a continuity with the ancient past, when women dressed well, and after "lovemaking" "disappear forever." These memories may be a treasure that lasts forever, and show the impermanence of a lifetime of experience. In the years when Soluble Fish was being written, André Breton worked at La Nouvelle Revue Francais, and had met Pablo Picasso. His writing shows an understanding of the esthetics of modern art, with visual images that express the transition in poetics from Dada to Surrealism.

His identifications with nature are in cadenced steps with his pursuits of love: a series of mysterious women mark his poetic vision; and in a passage called "a kiss is so quickly forgotten," he takes us into the burning forest where his eyes become flowers of the hazelnut tree, the trails beckon to him, his hair is transformed into mushrooms...
                                                            André Breton
                                                            Magus of Surrealism
                                                            Anna Balakian

The romantic relationships of Soluble Fish continue in André Breton's next novel Nadja (1928), and with the novelists and short story writers of the Surrealist movement he has idealized the idea of love. This is a love for the esthetics of poetry, modern Surrealist painting, and for the poetic novel. When Nadja speaks of the "blue wind," this art awareness is a form of self-representation as a modern Surrealist self-portrait, a sense of the future perfect which Jacques Derrida calls the pluspresent.

Looking back I no longer see clearly, it is as if a waterfall stood between the theatre of my life and me, who am not the principal actor in it.
                                                            Soluble Fish
                                                            André Breton

The narrator of Soluble Fish is being good hearted in his service to the literary community, and Philippe Sollers in Event expresses a similar thought, where the narrator has produced a work of inter(text)uality that has become: a collective consciousness composed of visionary experience with scenes that have a filmlike quality, and featuring a close reading of a text that is similar to their own. I have told the story of a red headed waterfall in my Surrealist novel-in-progress: The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, a waterfall that whose red hair flows forward through time.
                                                        
To write false novels.

Whoever you may be, if the spirit moves you burn a few laurel leaves and, without wishing to tend this meager fire, you will begin to write a novel. Surrealism will allow you to: all you have to do is set the needle marked "fair" at "action," and the rest will follow naturally.
                                                           Manifesto of Surrealism
                                                           André Breton

The idea of a "false novel" is a novel which may not adhere to a specific genre, and in this sense the Surrealist novel is a new genre created by André Breton. In Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) André Breton invites the young reader to write a Surrealist novel, and echoes the advice of Tristan Tzara in writing a Dadaist poem. The use of psychic automatism, a technique used in pyschoanalysis to reveal the hidden desires of the mind, free from the moral constraints of the Super-ego, which represents the wisdom of the parental, or authoritarian voice of the mind, psychic automatism reveals the truth of the consciousness, and with Surrealism, this truth is put into poetic form, or into painting.

Now it is tenderness that takes hold once again, the boulevard like a swamp seasoning the luminous signboards with salt. I bring back wild fruits, sunny bays that I give her and that in her hands are immense jewels.
                                                           Soluble Fish
                                                           André Breton

With Soluble Fish by André Breton has become the novelist of his dreams. Soluble Fish has begun a trend that continues to be of relevance in the early decades of the 21st Century, with its innovative style of poetic creativity that has inspired young writers throughout the world.

Soluble Fish is a poetic text included in the book Manifestos of Surrealism (1969) by André Breton published by The University of Michigan Press.

 David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He is the editor of Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories by Jean Arp

§ 1

Arp on Arp:  A Masterful Collection of Sublime Dadaist Concrete Poetic Text(ures) 

A Book Review by 
David Detrich

 Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories (1972) by Jean Arp is a collection of poetic writings which span the decades from the youthful exuberance of 1920s Dada, through the more mature years of Surrealism, and finally to the innovative 1960s. This large hardback book features abstract drawings that enhance the esthetic appreciation for the art and poetry of Jean Arp in this edition edited by Marcel Jean. Published in the Documents of 20th Century Art series, edited by Robert Motherwell, and translated by Joachim Neugroschel, the poetic writings of Jean Arp impress the reader with the wit and sophisticated techniques of the art conscious Dadaist poet. We find that Jean Arp is one of the most intelligent poets of the 20th Century, writing with a conscious effort to preserve esthetic sincerity, while expressing a subtle Dadaist sense of humor. Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories is where the reader will find a life's work in one monumental volume, a masterwork of sublime Dadaist concrete poetics. 

The Manifesto of the Dada Crocodarium (1920) is a short manifesto written in Jean Arp's early style with phrases such as "long live DADA," which begin the trend of youthful exuberance that culminated in Paris Dada: with manifestoes from Tristan Tzara and André Breton, during the decade when theatrical performances created the divergence of Dada into Surrealism.

The poetic writing  from The Cloud Pump (1920), a series of poems written in unpunctuated prose, has the charm of open syntax, a style with a free flowing sense of syntactical structure, that has been developed by other writers of the 20th Century avant garde including: Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Philippe Sollers, Ronald Sukenick, and Raymond Federman.

in january graphite snows into the goat’s skin in february the bouquet of chalk-white light and white stars appears in march the destroying angel is in heat and the tiles and butterflies flutter by and the stars rock in their rings and the catchwind flowers rattle their chains and the princesses sing in their fog pots who chase on little fingers and wings the morning winds
                                                           The Cloud Pump
                                                           Jean Arp

The metaphor found in the phrase “graphite snows into the goat’s skin” verges on nonsense, yet the mind could imagine a subtle eroticism where “graphite” could be the artist’s pencil, and “snows into the goat’s skin” may represent the skin of the narrator. When the reader imagines these painterly images, one might think of an abstract painting where this image could occur, and the interpretation of these subtle metaphors is similar to the interpretation of modern abstract art.

The artist’s perspective appears in the phrase “the bouquet of chalk-white light and white stars,” which is a visionary abstraction which reminds one of white pastel chalk, and “the destroying angel is in heat” refers to the hierarchy of angels. As I write this essay "the destroying angel" appears in the sense of the pluspresent: when tornadoes and tsunami waves appear as anarchic acts of destruction to our world, which we are trying to defend. “And the stars rock in their rings” is an erotic image that is preceded by “butterflies,” where the poet imagines princesses “who chase on little fingers and wings the morning winds," lines which remind the reader of futuristic erotic images, with rock music perceived from the viewpoint of the voyeur.

Arp wrote The Cloud Pump, a volume of poems that he handed to me personally upon arriving in Berlin in the early twenties. The poems are well formed and full of an ardent joy of colors: they reveal a sense of humor that, never turns monstrous although bordering on the grotesque. Arp aims at totality, depth, essence.
                                                          Memoirs of a 
                                                          Dada Drummer
                                                          Richard Huelsenbeck

The poetic works of Jean Arp are of the finest in modern poetry, with the reaching of metaphor to even the most distant comparison, in a way that the informed reader will recognize as relevant to the moment of writing: the finest comparisons as an exalted poetics. His works imply a futurist esthetic with the use of the double word: a genetic linking of concepts into a new species, defining the sentence structures that we may perceive in the future of poetry, with a more complex meaning appearing in a given sentence. This richness is what attracts many readers to the works of Jean Arp, the Dadaists, Pablo Picasso, and the Surrealist novels, which follow the lines of complex verbal abstraction in the final decades of 20th Century literary development.

sings into the mouth of the goblet the secret that takes its siesta spread out at the bottom which if the white dissolves in such a pale blue it dissolves it sighs in the rose and in ecstasy the yellow faints floats its image in the zephyr and the cambric and a scent of violets and sways along when the clock moves its spider legs to catch a fly 
                                                        The Burial of the Count
                                                        of Orgaz and other poems
                                                        Pablo Picasso

 The poetic texts of Pablo Picasso have evolved from the early writings of Jean Arp, a trend which has inspired my own novel-in-progress entitled The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, which has the esthetic look of concrete poetry, and with the visual design of a novel written in minimal squares of unpunctuated prose. The innovative novel has learned from the writings of the artists, who are aware of the esthetic theories which produce visual images that parallel the abstract writing of the contemporary avant garde novel.

The Three Exemplary Novels (1935) by Hans Arp and Vicente Huidobro feature the Dadaist humor that describes the hermaphroditic globules which may be a product of the future technology, and the collaboration between the two writers has produced literary witticisms that follow the lines of Jean Arp's original esthetic theory: Dada rejects art, and follows nature. This may symbolize the split between the artist and anti-artist, the sophistication of the true artist, or the rebellion against art by the anti-artist.

From The Man Who Lost His Skeleton (1939) is a collaborative novel by Jean Arp, Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Georges Hugnet, Henri Pastoureau, Gisèle Prassinos, et al. Chapter Four: The Skeleton on Vacation by Jean Arp shows the influence of Surrealism on the modern novel, with the absurdity of the youthful energies of Dada having evolved into the more accomplished work of the Surrealists in the decades of the 1930s.

The important element introduced then by Arp was “humor” in its subtlest form: the kind of whimsical conceptions that gave to the Dada Movement such an exuberant liveliness as opposed to the purely intellectual tendencies of Cubism and Expressionism... For Arp, art is Arp.
                                                 Marcel Duchamp
                                                 From the Catalog Collection
                                                 of the Société Anonyme 1949

 Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories by Jean Arp shows the development of one of the 20th Century's most artistic poets, whose avant garde writing has the sense of humor and innovative intelligence that make this monumental collection worthy of continued critical attention, and esthetic interpretation.

 David Detrich lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he has just completed The Convergence of Two Narrative Lines Ascending, an ultramodern Surrealist novel written in minimal squares. He is working on Dream the Presence of the Circular Breast Starfish Topography, a monumental Surrealist novel written with innovative typographical design. His first novel Big Sur Marvels & Wondrous Delights (2001) is available from Amazon. He is the editor of Innovative Fiction Magazine and Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations.

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